Successful Winter Lights Fest is put on ice for another year

With grace and vigor on the ice and a barrelful of fire for cold hands rinkside, Milford's fifth annual Winter Lights Festival concluded on Saturday afternoon at Ann Street Park in Milford.

JESSICA COHEN

With grace and vigor on the ice and a barrelful of fire for cold hands rinkside, Milford's fifth annual Winter Lights Festival concluded on Saturday afternoon at Ann Street Park in Milford.

Approximately 125 people watched a brisk and spirited 45-minute performance, from local champion skater Jordan Hartey to music from the Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian," to Alizah Allen's "Birdland" to jazz from "The Threepenny Opera."

Hartey has just graduated from Delaware Valley High School a few months before the Winter Lights Festival debuted five years ago. Now she has a master's degree in exercise physiology and will begin her doctorate in physical therapy this fall.

"What came across," said festival producer Michael Carson, "was that people were grateful for this event in the dead of winter when people are cabin-bound, which was our purpose."

Amateur skaters filled the rink when the performers left. Scott Sheldon, who helps set up and maintain the rink, told Carson the rink was busy with skaters throughout the following day on Sunday. With low temperatures ongoing, the rink may last awhile for public use this year.

After last year's disappointing melting of festival plans in mild weather, Carson reveled in this year's accomplishment.

"A home-schooling mom asked, 'What does this cost?' Nothing," Carson said. "A boy on the ice after the show said it was 'astounding.' People came up to my wife after the show and gave her a pastry from the Patisserie, saying, 'Thank you for doing this.'"

Carson also said he understood how his audience might miss the meaning in some of the pieces, as he learned in a question-and-answer session after last week's performance.

"Unlike theater, with many rehearsal opportunities at $25 an hour, trying to do something on a grand scale on ice is more difficult," he said. "With the pageantry piece, we had to change, but couldn't work out the kinks in time. The ice was frozen only the last five nights, so we had to hurry with preparation."

Carson sees the festival venture as exploring new artistic expression.

"People think, 'I can do this,' but it's not so easy," Carson said. "We're creating a new genre of ice dance with emotional stories and personal points of view. We gain insight by asking questions. What didn't you like? What was wrong?"

In the 2014 Winter Lights Festival, Carson said, the spirit world will be interacting "mischievously" with the human world to an original score dramatizing "The Famished Road," the Booker Prize-winning novel by Ben Okri. Carson got clues about how to show spirits' changeability when the Winter Lights Festival presented the story of Persephone two years ago. However, the challenge will also be to somehow condense the 1,300-word novel into 20 minutes.